Could've come back as xebra2 and simply not acted asinine.
By not acting assinine do you mean ignore flaws in your system and not point out when mods are abusive?
The lead runners on the scoreboards are people with known integrity, and that is of significance.
Well, this was where we always disagreed. Or, more accurately, this was where SadisticMystic and I always disagreed. You didn't seem to care, or to want to have anything to do with managing the times or forums, so much so that you left them in the hands of a child.
I would prefer a small minority of inaccurate statistics than eliminate the vast majority of honest players because they couldn't provide 100% incontrovertible proof.
It's pretty unlikely the cheaters were a minority. People cheat for no reason. That's just the way they are.
I also find it interesting that you apparently would hold that most purported cheaters would take the time to divulge a system of times they don't know exists before submitting their first time.
It takes all of no time at all to notice the times already posted follow a (very simple) pattern, especially with how much the subject was discussed on the forums.
You also fail to realize (intentionally?) that most people submit more than one time, so the odds ofcatching cheaters are pretty near one.
Two people that had been banned had beaten that time, probably even before you were a member of TSC. I believe Popo Nana had also achieved 0:48 sometime during the middle of 2004, though if he/she didn't make it public, it's immaterial.
Publically, perhaps. But I'd been able to achieve this through Save States at the beginning of the year, but seeing as it was with Save States, that would not have been a legitimate record.
What you allegedly do in private is no one's concern. If you come up with a new strategy, why not make it public?
Bite me. I don't generally read older posts if I have something to say.
By the way (even though this is a little off-topic), ever noticed that these stages defy the laws of physics? Only a torus will wrap in the way that these maps do, not a sphere, which the game makes it look like.
I'm fairly certain that since you can only travel along an orthogonal grid, there is an analytic map from the torus to the sphere, though such a mapping clearly wouldn't preserve distances. If there were any singularities, you could hide them inside bouncers. Anyways, even if I'm wrong, what's so bad about a torus? They certainly exist and can be constructed. If you are referring to the curvature of the horizon in the game, well, light can be bent.
From my experience there most of the people who submited fake times were caught.
That's doubtful. Where there is incentive to cheat, no penalties for doing so, and almost zero chance of you getting caught, people will cheat. People even cheat when there is absolutely no incentive to cheat. (Meaning they will not benefit in any way by cheating.) I am an economics student and have read extensively about a number of studies concerning cheating and how it affects various game theory models, and they all agree on at least one conclusion: the vast majority of people are cheaters.
I recall a particularly damning study I read about a few years ago. In the study, participants were given two puzzles to solve. Both of those puzzles were those sliding-block puzzles where you have 15 numbers and you just have to push the blocks around to put the numbers in order. One of them was easy to solve, and one of them was literally impossible to solve. (It's simple to construct an impossible puzzle, just take a solved puzzle and swap the positions of any two adjacent numbers. Since there is no sliding maneuver that can exhange the positions of any two adjacent numbers, the puzzle is unsolvable.) The interesting thing about these puzzles was the pieces weren't locked together, or locked into the board. A cheater could easily just remove all the pieces and arrange them however he liked, akin to taking apart a Rubik's Cube and reassembling it into the solved position.
Anyways, the participants in the study were normal people. They got paid money for participating in the experiment, but the amount had nothing to do with whether or not they solved the puzzles. All they had to do was walk into the room, try to solve the puzzles, and walk out. No one cared if they solved anything. The results were not associated with their names, it was completely anonymous. No one watched them while they tried to solve the puzzles. They could spend as long as they wanted trying to solve the puzzles. There was absolutely no incentive to cheat. How many people, do you suppose, "solved" the impossible puzzle? Over 80%.
So you tell me: did most of TSC use emulators, when there was a strong incentive to cheat, little or no chance of getting caught, and no penalties if you were?
The people there had some sort of method to determine if a time was fake or not but wouldn't reveal it to the public because it would make it easier for cheaters to fake times.
"Secret methods" only existed for more advanced games, I don't recall which ones in particular because I played none of them ... probably all the GBA and GCN games. The super secret method was just to note that the clock had a finer resolution than the graphics engine of the game itself -- for example, the clock updates every 1/100th of a second, the graphics update every 1/60th of a second. That made certain times impossible, so if someone pulled a number out of thin air, there was a decent probability it would be an impossible time. For people that pulled 10 times out of thin air, it was virtually assured one of them would be fake, and then you could just invalidate all of that person's times. If you don't understand this, go look at the times for Sonic Advance. Notice how none of them end in 1, 4, or 9? So if you completely made up a time for a track in Sonic Advance, there was a 3/10 chance you'd pick a time that ended in 1, 4, or 9, which is obviously fake. Not only are the odds on that cheat detection method pretty poor, but any moron could discover how it worked and thus never get caught by it.
None of the Sega Genesis games have this (or any) cheat detection method, even Sonic 3 Competition Mode. Despite S3C having a timer with hundredth-second resolution, it's still possible to force the game to display any time.
There were also many videos submitted to prove the times were real.
There are many videos on this site. How real are they? Even the videos I submitted at TSC, which consisted of actual footage of me playing live on a TV, could have been faked. All I'd have to do is get a good run on Gens, hook my computer up to my TV, full screen Gens, and record that.
Though no one is ever going to agree on anything and nothing can be done about it, and arguing for or against any particular name is completely futile, as is suggesting a new one ... besides all that, I was completely serious when I suggested we call them cheatyface runs. That particular name was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I really have no problems integrating "cheat" somewhere into the name. It will shut the Hell up all of our haters, and the people that already love us won't think less of us because they already understand and love what we are doing anyways, and newcomers will still love what we do because these videos are @#$%ing awesome.
You can also shave various amounts of frames here and there with better slope jumping. Just by tweaking a few jumps from ~00:41:00 on I was able to get to the checkpoint at 00:45:32, which is more than the 9 frame improvement you needed for a 46s finish. I haven't actually sat down and examined the rest of the level but my "instinct" tells me you can probably whittle the level down to 43-44s on minor improvements alone.
You can get considerably more horizontal velocity than you did. If you do it right you will know it, because you'll miss that corner by a mile. If memory serves correctly it will launch you far enough so that you don't need to jump up to the last platform. I'm sure that's enough of a time saver to get 46-47.
Overall your path is excellent, and your boss strategy is without peer, but you are missing a crucial shortcut. The corner of the cieling that you clip at 41:09 can be bypassed. I've yet to look at this level in an emulator so I honestly can't tell you what it is you need to do in order to not clip that corner, when speed running SL3 I always chalked it up to luck. I suspect it just has to do with your departure point from the upslope, so try adding in a jump somewhere prior to change your point of departure.
Okay, I tried what you said and got a 0:19, but I don't think that's the reason why. I'm sure you're aware of this, but if you're not I found a way to jump over the wall after the "speed bumps" leading to the escalating stairs near the end of the level. I haven't seen the speedrun of this level, so I don't know if this is used or not. Have a look:
http://www.geocities.com/eonouzo/StarLightZone2in19.zip
The time can easily be brought down to 0:18, possibly even 0:17. The jump before the crumbling floor at the beginning can be done better. This is merely a demostrational video.
EDIT: Okay, just brought it down to 0:18 barely.
EDIT2: Woohoo! 0:17 reached! BTW, I had to slowdown at the end because of the formation of the rotating platforms.
P.S. I realize Star Light Zone is a long way from where you're at, I just hope I can motivate you to continue on :)
Awesome times, Ouzo. The second jump is a great find, it's not used in the speed run. It may be a bit of time before I get started again, though ... I'm taking some summer classes and working a bit more than I did during the regular semester.
xebra, you seem to have an unfounded personal vendetta against the Sonic Center and are spreading bad rumours that can't be challenged since nobody from there comes here (apparently). I don't agree that members of TSC were known "more for their immaturity than their integrity" - I'd like to see evidence backing this up. I highly doubt that any of the Sonic 1 times were faked or cheated. It appears to be your condescending personality, rather than the collective immaturity of the whole sonic center, which is causing these views - your blind accusations of cheating with no evidence, as well as the way you p*ssed someone off in the sonic 2 thread are examples.
Though I'm sure he will deny it, I provided SadisticMystic with incontrovertible proof that FoxLuc entered false times. He banned me. The admins at TSC had no thought for fair competition, and as far as I'm concerned the entire community is corrupt. So stick that up your tailpipe and smoke it. As for the little spat Quietust and I had in the Sonic 2 thread, that's none of your damned business. People sometimes get frustrated with each other and we worked through it like civilized individuals.
They are all legit, trust me. (Keep in mind that Ghost is, in fact, me. I didn't just submit made up times.) For SL2, if you jump off of the ramp leading up to the breakaway floor, you can launch up into the stratosphere and across a significant portion of the level. At this time I don't expect to find any significant improvements with an emulator. SB1 requires a ridiculously difficult maneuver that enables you to bypass the disappearing platforms entirely. At this time I don't expect to find any significant improvements with an emulator. SB2 requires a remarkable coincidence of a number of the timer-based obstacles that nonetheless is possible. I think this can probably be improved with an emulator. SB3 I also expect to shave a second or two off on the basis of flawless jumping within the water portions.
No, you just need someone to teach you the quirks of the AI. Beating Xaero in The Very End of You is a particularly easy battle, even on Nightmare, because all you have to do is hide behind a pillar, wait for Xaero to (try to) cross the chasm, and rail his ass in midair. If he spawns on your side, cross over to the other side while he is grabbing weapons, rinse and repeat.
Neither do they contain the records established by xebra (me) or brian0918 (a former college roommate) -- and we actually held quite a few of the Sonic 1, 2, and 3c records -- because we were banned for fighting with one of the mods. While it should be noted that Ghost is actually my alter-ego (my ghost ...), there are probably in excess of 20 tracks I failed to submit times for with that account.
It should also be noted that a large proportion of those times are probably faked or cheated. Members of The Sonic Center were known more for their immaturity than their integrity.
Damn. Someone beat my Death Egg Zone time, finally. That's kind of depressing, but now I have a new goal. Trying to match that time legitimately to I can plug it in as a record time at TSC. >_> <_<;
I don't believe you held the TSC record for Death Egg in Sonic 2. (And if you were tied for first I don't believe you were the first to achieve that time.)
A 12 hit strategy was first discovered on February 9th.
I've already done it on a console. That's no reason for you not to do it to, but we already know it's possible.
TSC is dead.
Lastly, I still say he should've used Miles.
Using Tails would have made a number of time saving exploits impossible, for example, breaking a block with Tails in Hill Top Zone, and stacking spindashes in Metropolis Zone for quicker rides up the screws.
It's been stated somewhere that the goal of this movie was to minimize the level times and not worry about the bonuses.
You are quite a bit more attentive than Joseph Collins seeing as how that was mentioned a mere 5 posts above his own, on the same page.
From The Know-It-All by A. J. Jacobs, pp. 276-277:
Originally, the word "Quaker" was an insult. It was coined to make fun of the members of the Society of Friends for trembling at the word of God. As George Fox, founder of the society in England, wrote in 1650, "Justice Bennet of Derby first called us quakers because we bid them tremble." Despite early derisive use, the Friends adopted the term themselves. Now, of course, it carries no negative connotations.
I love these stories -- the ones where an underdog group co-opts an insult and makes it their own. It's got a great mischievous Bugs Bunny feel to it. I loved when the gay movement stole the word "queer" and took all its power away from the seething homophobes. And the Britannica is packed with other examples: A journalist came up with the term "Impressionism" as a jeer, but Monet and his pals stole it as their own. A group of Oxford students in the 18th century were derisively called "Methodists" because of their methodical habits of study and devotion. Muckraking was originally an insult derived from John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, which referred to the Man with the Muckrake "who could look no way but downward," always searching for the worldly gain in the cow dung, never bothering to look to heaven. The early crusading journalists stole it and made it their own. Me, I'm still trying to figure out how to co-opt my eighth-grade nickname, Douchebag.
The path before us is clear. We cheaters must call them cheatyface runs.
I'm sure it entertains you to think so.
(Hint: a comma before a coordinating conjunction is always correct but not always required, especially when the clauses joined by the conjunction are balanced or brief, and are intended to be read quickly and without pause.)
